It’s on! Ostensible allies for the last couple years, Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rand Paul,
R-Ky., have commenced the battle for the unofficial title of conservative front-runner. That’s no
surprise, but what is remarkable is their choice of weapons: foreign policy. For the past several
years, there has been a lot of overblown hype about how the GOP, particularly the party base, is
becoming isolationist. So it’s interesting that Cruz would seek to get to Paul’s right on the
issue.

The first round began in earnest less than 24 hours after Paul — to no one’s surprise — won the
Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll by a country mile. (Ron and Rand Paul have
always overperformed in such contests, and Rand has his father’s machine working for him.)

“I’m a big fan of Rand Paul. He and I are good friends. I don’t agree with him on foreign
policy,” Cruz said on ABC’s
This Week. “I think U.S. leadership is critical in the world, and I agree with him that we
should be very reluctant to deploy military force abroad. But I think there is a vital role, just
as Ronald Reagan did. … The United States has a responsibility to defend our values.”

Paul responded almost immediately with an op-ed for Breitbart.com that was, depending on your
reading, either a gentle rebuke or a not-so-passive-aggressive attack on Cruz. “Some politicians,”
he wrote, “have used this time to beat their chest. What we don’t need right now is politicians who
have never seen war talking tough for the sake of their political careers.”

Titled “Stop Warping Reagan’s Foreign Policy,” Paul’s op-ed is a clever bit of rhetorical
jujitsu in which he criticizes others for using Reagan’s legacy while at the same time enlisting it
for his own purposes. Paul offers a version of his father’s effort — during the 2008 and 2012
presidential primaries — to cast the Gipper as a noninterventionist who was plagued by hawks to his
right.

Any analysis that casts the passionate anti-communist invader of Grenada (without congressional
approval), supporter of the contras and Afghan mujahideen, champion of missile defense, bomber of
Libya and winner of the Cold War as a noninterventionist certainly gets points for creativity.

“I don’t claim to be the next Ronald Reagan nor do I attempt to disparage fellow Republicans as
not being sufficiently Reaganesque,” Paul wrote, even as he disparaged politicians for distorting
Reagan’s (allegedly) real record. “But I will remind anyone who thinks we will win elections by
trashing previous Republican nominees or holding oneself out as some paragon in the mold of Reagan
that splintering the party is not the route to victory.”

This last bit was a reference to Cruz’s CPAC speech in which Cruz mocked the GOP’s tendency to
nominate moderates: “We all remember President Dole, President McCain and President Romney.”

While probably sincere, Paul’s long-standing commitment to Reagan’s 11th Commandment — “Thou
shalt not speak ill of another Republican” — also serves as a shrewd attempt to inoculate himself
against real vulnerability.

His father was an often-vicious critic of his fellow Republicans, including Reagan. In 1987, Ron
Paul left the GOP to run as a libertarian presidential candidate, in the process denouncing Reagan
for “massive monetary inflation, indiscriminate military spending, an irrational and
unconstitutional foreign policy, zooming foreign aid, the exaltation of international banking, and
the attack on our personal liberties and privacy.” Reaganomics, said Paul the Elder, was simply “
warmed-over Keynesianism.” Rand is a very different man than his father, but his big-tent
conservatism is a bit ironic given the fact he worked on his father’s campaign and is the heir to
the Paul machine.

I have no idea who will win this battle. Right now it’s hard to see how Cruz can get past Paul.
It’s also hard to see how a mainstream media that unfairly turned Dole, McCain and Romney into
extremists won’t make easy sport of Paul.

Last, it’s worth keeping in mind that no Republican since Reagan has won the nomination by first
seeking to be the standard-bearer of the conservative base. That’s one aspect of the Reagan legacy
both are eager to inherit.